SEO Search Engine Ranking Blog

Well this entry from Feb. 6, 2004 wasn’t very informative, but considering my more recent rankings I think it does show that I’ve made progress over the years. I’d like to say That I’ve learned a lot, but SEO is more about resources than brains. A little bit of mind power helps I guess, but not as much as deep pockets…

So ESL go.com is #51 on Yahoo and #66 on Google for ESL. That’s a bigger discrepancy than I would have expected. Clearly Google is the more important search engine however; In the 5 dyas of February so far, I have over 1,000 hits from Google and around 400 (a bit more) from Yahoo!.

Here’s one I wrote Feb. 1, 2004:

In my previous entry and comment I mentioned that I seemed to have settled at 80, but then “ESL go” went to 78 for the search term ESL on Google. Now, I’ve gone to 69. Now maybe the google dance hadn’t really finished and it’s still winding down, or maybe the time visitors spend on a site is really important in Google’s formula for determining rankings.

I read somewhere that if you click on a web site after doing a search, the engine monitors to see if you come back to the search results. If you do, then the site you clicked on didn’t have the information you needed; it was a bad search result. If you don’t come back, then you must have found what you were looking for; it’s a good search result. I wonder if I moved up 12 spaces by clicking on my domain (I only did it 3 or 4 times) and not going back to the listings? Probably not; seems too good to be true. But I think clicking and not going back to the listings can certainly help.

4+ years later and I don’t think I’ve learned much about this since then. I’m guessing that since it’s fairly easy to manipulate search engines will either not consider this or give it very little weight. I know it has been many years since I did a search, clicked on my site, and then waited for an update…

If you were evil and had way too much time, you could click on sites belonging to people you don’t like and then hit the back button to return to the search results… Not that you’d be having a huge impact…

My last January 2004 post:

Previosly, the keyword “ESL” was mentioned once in my ESL site’s title and heading. I recently changed the title so that it’s now mentioned 3 times: ESL go – free English as a second language: learning ESL + teaching ESL.

What kind of affect has this had? Not as significant an effect as I would have hoped. I seem to have moved up about 15 spots, from the mid-nineties to #80. Google has also registerd about 40 new links to my site (though my page rank is still 6) so link popularity may have also fueled the increase.

It’s not too different 4+ years later: “ESL – English as a second language learning & teaching ESL”

I haven’t looked at the title in years so it’s probably time to reevaluate. The site is #5 for ‘teaching ESL’ and I bet that if I remove that from the title I will lose a few spots. I like the learning, because I need people to know that the site is for both teachers and students when they see it listed in the serps. I may not change the title at all.

Anyway, SEO tip for choosing a title. Make it keywords or phrases you want to and can rank for. Also make sure it gives people a reason to click on your site when they do find it in the SERPs.

Here is my second ever post on this blog according to archive.org.

I recently realized something I’ve been doing wrong since I started ESL go.com – English as a second language learning and teaching and that is the text of the hyperlinks. For example a link like ESLgo doesn’t help for the keyword ESL. That’s why a domain name like esl-go might have been better. Now I realize the problem and ask people to put ESL go in the text link. Of course other ESL sites don’t want me to do better in the search engines so I get annoyed dealing with webmasters who insist on eslgo for my site’s link text.

Another thing I realized is that graphic links don’t contain any keywords. Master of the obvious eh? On my site, I have a graphic header and drop down menus for a footer, and in the end my 250 pages of internal links don’t help me out with key words at all. The header has to stay, but my footer will be redesigned to consist of keyword rich text links.

What we need to add to the January 23, 2004 discussion is that graphic links have alt text and some people theorize that alt text counts as anchor text.

Also, variety shows search engines your links are natural. So if every link says “sports betting online” search engines know something weird is going on. But if some say “sports betting” others say “sports betting online” others say “sports betting tips” some say “click here” some say “this site” some are image links, etc. then search engine bots should see a site that is naturally integrated into the fabric of the web.

At least I’ve learned something in the past 4.5 years…

According to the way back machine, this was my first ever post:

Domain names and SEO

According to the web archive, Lycos does consider domain names when determining search results (so other search engines may too) and if you want to make sure that words are separated, use a hyphen. That tells me that for my ESL web site (the archived version), I should have all links pointing to www.esl-go.com and own www.eslgo.com (point it to www.esl-go.com) since it’s the one people will remember and type into their browsers.

The Lycos guy points out that it’s a small factor, but every little bit helps, no? Anyway, it’s too late for ESLgo.com, but www.seo-search-engine-ranking.com is a name that tries to take advantage of this. Of course if you like my site you’d better add it to your favorites; www.seo-search-engine-ranking.com may be tough to remember…

Seems like common knowledge now, but back on January 16, 2004 it was fairly new to me. It’s whay I registered this name,  a list of keywords I thought I might rank for one day. Little did I know how fierce the competition would become for SEO related keywords…